Feature request : Title screenshot on rom opening

frednorm2000 · Post by **frednorm2000** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 1:46 pm

Hi,

I thought it might be interesting to see a screenshot of each game in the roms list window. It's easier to recognize a game with an image rather than a filename with weird flag like [h1C] [b2] [T+Ita] [!]. Of course a folder with all the screenshot must be present and each screenshot should have the same name as the rom.

What do you think?

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:06 pm

This is what a frontend is for.

Besides, having so many hard-patched ROMs is useless in a common scenario.. you are very likely only going to use a smaller subset of the original game so asking for this for your cited reason is actually silly.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 8:43 pm

That feature doesn't sound as bad as others in the same vein, though.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 8:51 pm

let's take it one step further and be like iTunes, which IIRC stores a picture of the CD cover inside the MP3 file

frednorm2000 · Post by **frednorm2000** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:09 pm

Deathlike2 : it's true that having all dump of a game is silly. This was just an example. In fact even if you clean your roms and you keep only good dumps, you still have more than 800 roms. Let me give you another example that you will understand. When I was young I played a game a few times. I had rented it at the video game store. Unfortunately I can't remember the title. Even if I look at the list of roms I can't find it. If I had a screenshot of the game I could find right away. This is another utility of this kind of feature. As mentioned by adventure_of_link other software like iTunes, WMP is already using this function. Now if you think it is unnecessary to add functions to software you can keep the version 1.51 and never touch it thinking that this is the best software available. However, I believe it's against the nature of open source software.

Fred

gllt · Post by **gllt** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:14 pm

you know zsnes IS still being developed, right?

Post by **badinsults** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:14 pm

It would sort of be like the Genesis Collective. Unfortunately, we don't have anyone like Cowering who is an ambitious enough snes fan to do this.

frednorm2000 · Post by **frednorm2000** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:37 am

If I tell you that I already did it ... ? For many other console too ...

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:50 am

For a thought, but developing a frontend would accomplish the same goal better. The file loading system doesn't have enough space unless that's redesigned. You could do so much more with a frontend, including playing a sound or SPC file for that game to better identify it. Integrating this to ZSNES is not as friendly as you'd think.

Tek · Post by **Tek** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 11:39 pm

Actually I for one have been taking screenshots of game title screens for my game music rips so hey look fancy on my ipod.

Also wouldn't it make more sense to have a scan of the game box?

andyqkw · Post by **andyqkw** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:15 am

gllt wrote:you know zsnes IS still being developed, right?

We all know and ZSNES is still being developed, but sadly we've not been able to see anything for the past 2 years plus, not even a beta release...

ShadowFX · Post by **ShadowFX** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:21 am

gllt wrote:you know zsnes IS still being developed, right?

I'm sure only a handful of people know if ZSNES is still being developed or not. But I think for most people it's unclear, including me.

Awakened · Post by **Awakened** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 3:18 pm

Just use ECC ( http://www.camya.com/ ): http://i44.tinypic.com/2h5r4on.png

That's with boxarts, but you can have it display title screens as well.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:35 pm

frednorm2000 wrote:As mentioned by adventure_of_link other software like iTunes, WMP is already using this function.

Except they handle it differently.

IIRC Windows Media Player stores it in the registry.
iTunes stores the picture somewhere in the mp3 file.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:52 pm

I thought it might be interesting to see a screenshot of each game in the roms list window.

The main problem is that the UI is rendered internally at 256x224, and stretched from there. This is about the best you could do:

It doesn't really belong in emulators, as others are saying. I'd recommend checking out NSRT Frontend / NF for something like this.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 8:07 pm

adventure_of_link wrote:IIRC Windows Media Player stores it in the registry.

Nope. Folder.jpg.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 8:20 pm

in before thumbs.db

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:38 pm

kode54 wrote:
adventure_of_link wrote:IIRC Windows Media Player stores it in the registry.
Nope. Folder.jpg.

Really. I could've swore that I have A LOT of loose songs in my My Music folder, and despite this, I still have album information for all the songs, even the CD covers. :/ Not to mention said CD covers have filenames of AlbumArt_{insert random hexadecimal number here}.jpg that are marked with the hidden and system flags. -shrug-

This is despite the fact that these songs aren't sorted in the folder by artist. If you want a better example of what I mean, I can always give a screenshot.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 1:16 am

adventure_of_link wrote:
kode54 wrote:
adventure_of_link wrote:IIRC Windows Media Player stores it in the registry.
Nope. Folder.jpg.
Really. I could've swore that I have A LOT of loose songs in my My Music folder, and despite this, I still have album information for all the songs, even the CD covers. :/ Not to mention said CD covers have filenames of AlbumArt_{insert random hexadecimal number here}.jpg that are marked with the hidden and system flags. -shrug-

This is despite the fact that these songs aren't sorted in the folder by artist. If you want a better example of what I mean, I can always give a screenshot.

I guess it does that too. I doubt it stores any images in the registry, though.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 1:40 am

Code: Select all

C:\Users\Sweenish\Music\iTunes\Album Artwork

then \Cache or \Download from there.

it mixes and matches between storing them there and on the file itself, from what i've seen. i think it depends on whether you let the itunes store grab it, or you add it manually.

as for this topic, i've never met an emulator that shows a screen grab or anything. it's always a front-end. granted, some emulators come packaged with a front-end that the devs prefer, or something like that. but that's back when i was all about neo-geo.

I_am_dumb · Post by **I_am_dumb** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:29 am

frednorm2000 wrote:Hi,

I thought it might be interesting to see a screenshot of each game in the roms list window. It's easier to recognize a game with an image rather than a filename with weird flag like [h1C] [b2] [T+Ita] [!]. Of course a folder with all the screenshot must be present and each screenshot should have the same name as the rom.

What do you think?

Sounds like a feature from M.A.M.E.

Cool if it could be done, like maybe have a set up so that
you name a BMP file with the same file name as the rom
and it would show in a lil window off to the side of the list.
Would be a super bitch though to do that to all your roms.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 2:34 am

sweener2001 wrote:
Code: Select all
C:\Users\Sweenish\Music\iTunes\Album Artwork
then \Cache or \Download from there.

it mixes and matches between storing them there and on the file itself, from what i've seen. i think it depends on whether you let the itunes store grab it, or you add it manually.

Alright, how does the CD cover display on an iPod?

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:34 am

it references the artwork, which is stored seperately, i assume. it's not like the ipod is an abacus, only able to handle the most rudimentary of music files and tagging structures.

it's not like i know this for fact, but it is a solid deduction.

manually add a piece of artwork to one track, and let itunes grab the other.

highlight both and right-click -> delete album artwork. the manually added artwork is deleted, and the store-grabbed artwork stays.

many times when selecting a track to play on my ipod, the artwork doesn't show for a few seconds, but the track is already playing. might be that it doesn't read the artwork while it buffers the playback, or might be that it has to look somewhere else outside the music file to get the artwork.

and if you're going to get all sassy, then do you care to explain why those folders even exist if artwork storage outside of the file isn't possible?

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:54 am

sweener2001 wrote:and if you're going to get all sassy, then do you care to explain why those folders even exist if artwork storage outside of the file isn't possible?

Wasn't trying to sass, sorry.

More like I was wondering how the album art would get to the iPod regardless.

Zoomlet · Post by **Zoomlet** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:07 pm

adventure_of_link wrote:Wasn't trying to sass, sorry.

More like I was wondering how the album art would get to the iPod regardless.

Album art is usually added to the ID3 tag information in order to be viewed on an IPod. More specifically the album artwork is encapsulated in an ID3 version 2.3 tag frame along with other song information such as title, track, artist, etc.

More information for those interested: http://www.id3.org/ID3v2Easy

Back to the topic at hand:

I personally don't see the need for something like this in the emulator itself. I'm sure developer resources could be better used to further develop the functionality/compatibility of the emulator rather than adding something that is somewhat trivial and is already handled fairly well by other programs.

ZSNES board

Feature request : Title screenshot on rom opening

Feature request : Title screenshot on rom opening

Re: Feature request : Title screenshot on rom opening